When you accidentally delete an item from your Outlook mailbox, you can often recover it. The first place to look is the Deleted Items or Trash folders. Search for the item you want, then right-click it and select Move > Other Folder. To recover a deleted item, select it, make sure “Restore Selected Items” is switched on, and then click “OK.” The item will be moved back to the Deleted Item folder, where you can then move it back to whichever folder you like.
When you delete messages in Outlook, the messages are moved to the Trash folder. Items in this folder continue to take up space on your computer's hard disk and — if your account is set up to leave copies of the messages on the mail server — in your account mailbox. To free up some disk and mailbox space, you can empty the Trash folder.
If you have multiple e-mail accounts, you will have a Trash folder for each account.
Hold down CONTROL , and then in the folder list, click the Trash folder.
Click Empty Folder.
Notes:
Some kinds of e-mail accounts, such as Windows Live Hotmail accounts, automatically empty the Trash folder at predefined times.
With some email accounts you can set up a schedule in Outlook to empty your Trash folder regularly.
IMAP accounts offer multiple options for how deleted items are stored and displayed. To set your preferences, on the Tools menu, click Accounts, and then select the IMAP account in the account list. Click Advanced, click the Folders tab, and then next to Trash, select the options that you want.
When you delete an email in Microsoft Outlook, it disappears but it's not completely removed from your account. These deleted messages are moved to another folder in Outlook and not permanently deleted. These deleted emails are retained for your convenience in case you accidentally delete a message and want to recover it.
Instructions in this article apply to Outlook 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010; Outlook for Office 365, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook Online.
Chances are that any email you delete is still kept, hidden from normal view, for at least a few weeks and often much longer. To recover it, find the email in question.
Deleted emails are found in these locations:
If you change your mind right after you delete a message you want to keep, undoing the damage and recovering the email is particularly easy. To undo a deleted message that has been moved to the trash, press Ctrl+Z (Windows) or ⌘+Z. (Mac). The message returns to its original folder as long as no other action (such as moving or flagging another message) occurred after the message was deleted.
If you performed other actions after you deleted the message, undo the series of actions until you have successfully undone the deletion and restored the desired email. If you want to restore more than one message, go to the Deleted Items folder and recover the email.
Most deleted emails in Outlook are moved to the Deleted Items folder. This is also the place where you are most likely to restore emails.
To restore messages that are in the Deleted Items folder:
Select the folder that contains the deleted email messages.
For POP, Exchange, and Outlook Mail on the Web (Outlook.com) email accounts, go to Deleted Items. For IMAP accounts that use a folder for deleted items, go to Trash.
Open or highlight the message you want to recover. Highlight more than one email to recover several at one time.
If you cannot find a message, use the Search box to search the folder for the message's sender or subject.
Go to the Home tab and select Move > Other Folder. Or press Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows) or ⌘+Shift+M (Mac).
Highlight the designation folder for the recovered message.
Emails are removed from the Deleted Items folder after a certain period set by the account administrator, when you empty the Deleted Items folder, or if you permanently delete a message in the Deleted Items folder.
For most Exchange accounts, messages that are purged from the Deleted Items folder may be recovered for a period of time. This time period depends on how the Exchange administrator set up your account. This also applies to emails that were permanently deleted.
To restore messages that have been removed from the Deleted Items folder in Outlook for Windows:
Connect to your Exchange email account in Outlook.
Go to the account's Deleted Items folder.
Go to the Home tab.
In the Actions group, select Recover Deleted Items from Server.
In the Recover Deleted Items dialog box, highlight the messages you want to recover.
Sort the list using any of the column headers such as From or Deleted On; click again to reverse the sort order.
To highlight multiple emails, press and hold Ctrl then select the messages. To select a range of messages, press and hold Shift.
Select Restore Selected Items.
Select OK.
The message or messages are recovered and moved to the Deleted Items folder.
To restore the message, go to the Deleted Items folder and highlight the recovered message.
Go to the Home tab and select Move > Other Folder.
In the Move Items dialog box, select the Inbox or another folder.
Select OK.
Outlook for Mac does not offer an interface to recover messages purged from an Exchange account's Deleted Items folder. Instead, use the web interface to the account.
To restore an email that is no longer in an Exchange account's Deleted Items folder using Outlook Mail on the Web and Outlook Web App:
Open Outlook Web App for your Exchange account in your browser.
Open the Deleted Items folder.
If you don't see the full list of folders, select the Folders dropdown arrow (⌄).
Hover over the email you want to recover and select the checkbox.
Messages are sorted by the date they were deleted and moved to the Deleted Items folder.
The email is moved to the folder where it was located before it was deleted.
If you're unable to restore an email, you have other options. Check the following places for a backup copy of your email account:
To restore emails from email service backups (other than Outlook Mail on the Web and Outlook 365), examine these options:
To restore messages that have been saved using backup software and services:
If your Outlook data is not backed up and you lost your PST file, you may be able to recover the PST file using free data recovery software.
Restoring deleted Outlook email from a backup can be difficult. Explore other options first.
Before returning to any previous stage of your email archive, save your Outlook's current state and messages. Otherwise, you could lose messages you received in the time between and end up having to restore these.
If you're only missing one or two messages, ask the sender to send you another copy. They may have the email within easy reach in their Sent folder.